Nexus One plus Lego Mindstorms equals 12.5 second Rubik’s cube solver

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

The majority of developers in possession of a Google Nexus One smartphone will be using it to test apps destined for the Android Market. However, engineer David Gilday took a different route and made his Nexus One the brain of a Rubik’s cube solver.

The Nexus One is used in conjunction with a Lego Mindstorms kit to create the solver. Lego is used to hold and rotate the cube while an app on the Nexus One uses data garnered from the phone’s camera to first establish the state of the cube then relay instructions to the Mindstorm controller to solve it.

This isn’t the first Rubik’s cube solver Gilday has made, but it’s certainly the fastest. His first used a Nokia N95 and Symbian OS, then he moved to a DROID, but the Nexus One has proved the fastest managing a solve in 12.5 seconds although it averages 15 seconds. Gilday says the N1 is faster due to the 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 512MB RAM, and an update to his solving code.

His solver can work with cubes as large as 100x100x100, but good luck building a Lego robot to hold and turn a cube of that size.

It’s easy to forget the amount of power on offer inside the latest smartphones. They out perform PCs that are only a few years old, yet in the form factor they are presented in this power is hidden. Break it out and start using it with other devices and you have a very efficient and fast brain.

I think we are going to see this occurring more and more, especially with an open platform like Android. You’ve got a powerful unit in the form of a phone that can receive input via camera, touchscreen, or connected device, and an development platform to experiment with. How long is it going to be before we start seeing devices that promise all kinds of cool and advanced functionality, but ship as a shell requiring a phone to function as a brain?